Hands-on with GraceNote CarStars

GraceNote will tap music celebs for recommendation system

What if Common was guiding your music selections as you drive? That’s the promise of GraceNote CarStars, a GPS-enabled music recommendation system where music celebs talk to you and recommend music. In a lengthy personal demo at CES, we sat back in a brand new Nissan Altima and tapped into a vast selection of rap music, thanks to the guidance of MIMS and other artists. GraceNote has an audacious goal to tap most major artists –we asked about Wilco and they said Jeff Tweedy would likely do it – to provide guidance.

The system reads your GPS locale, so that the artist can then suggest and play music relative to your position – say, driving along a beach or cruising on a downtown strip. The touch interface is built in to the dash, and all options are accessible from voice activation as well. In one test, an artist said he could see that we did not have TI among our collection and said we should look into his latest offerings. GraceNote has not set plans for product release, but the demo looked fully realized and almost ready for most distribution to all hip-hop lovers (and more).